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In this first article in an ongoing series, we introduce the DataBank Customer Portal and describe how it helps our customers gain self-service control and complete visibility into their entire infrastructure. This article highlights the Portal’s extensive capabilities—and how they help customers improve day-to-day management. Stay tuned for additional articles, or learn more about the DataBank Customer Portal now.

Whether you rely on DataBank for colocation, cloud, security, or managed services, the DataBank Customer Portal is a valuable resource that provides increased visibility, convenience, and control over all aspects of your DataBank infrastructure.

We’re proud of the Customer Portal because it is so different from other customer portals or offerings in the market. (After their first look at the portal, our customers consistently tell us they haven’t seen anything like this anywhere else.) We started the process by collecting real-world feedback from our customers and custom-built the portal to make sure it continues to deliver all of the capabilities any company requires.

We chose not to use off-the-shelf software that couldn’t meet our high expectations. Instead, we built the portal from the ground up, complete with an official product roadmap, ongoing iterations based on new requests, and an agile software development methodology to make sure we deliver real business value for our customers.

Today, the Customer Portal gives you everything you need to see your entire environment and manage virtually every part of your infrastructure. This includes areas such as physical access, power use, network performance, resource management, security details, compliance, and reporting.

Customer portals increase service transparency, with 70% of users reporting faster issue resolution and better resource management. Customer portals are being enhanced into insight hubs with real-time analytics on usage, predictive consumption alerts, and AI-based optimization recommendations for tenants and operators.

To learn more, we created this tutorial series, where each article will highlight a different portion of the Customer Portal and describe the many benefits it provides. First up: support

Support Capabilities: Self-Service Access and Control

The support section of the portal is the area that DataBank customers visit the most. They can open tickets, review the status of open tickets, and search all of their ticket history, book conference rooms, manage on-site deliveries, and even request help for remote hands, which are available at all DataBank data centers.

Customers can look at the past history associated with any ticket or see various details (e.g., troubleshooting steps, resolution process, etc.). They can also subscribe themselves or other authorized users to any given ticket. However, if they want to communicate important details to non-authorized users, for example, to notify staff about a particular delivery, they can add them to the ticket email notifications. Those users will receive the ticket updates by email and can respond to those emails, which will add their comments to the ticket history, but they won’t be able to access sensitive data such as access credentials or network IPs.

While we will still perform these same functions for any DataBank customer, the visibility and self-service access give them even more control over their DataBank environment.

To learn more, stay tuned for future articles in this series or download the DataBank Customer Portal Overview today.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Windy City of Chicago is the third-most populous in the U.S. and the most important Illinois colocation spot. The state is home to many Fortune 500 companies—including Walgreens, Boeing, Caterpillar, and McDonald’s. The Chicago area is also a place where technology and tech expos abound—from conferences, trade shows, summits, and seminars.

Formed in the 1960s, the Illinois Technology and Research Corridor is home to the headquarters or regional centers for many Fortune 1000 companies, including many specializing in research, development, and logistics. Chicago has also become a world-class hub for tech talent and a top startup ecosystem in the U.S., driven by economic diversity and access to technology pros.

World Business Chicago states Chicago now plays in the top-tier tech league of San Francisco, New York, Boston and Los Angeles. Also, as a key launchpad for connectivity and cloud services, hyperscaler cloud providers and social media giants recognize the value of expanding operations in Chicago to provision applications benefitting from the low latency of edge computing based near large end-user bases.

Ideal for Edge Computing and Business Continuity

Chicago’s population base and its location in the Central Time Zone make the four DataBank colocation data centers ideal for delivering edge computing services to the heartland of the U.S. In addition, companies with primary data centers on the east and west coast—as well as those in Minnesota, Kansas and other Midwest states—can utilize the data centers for disaster recovery. Taking this approach ensures business continuity by relying on a remote geographic zone for failover operations.

Our colocation data centers play a role in the mission of the City of Chicago to leverage technology to improve and expand city programs and services. In addition, Chicago aims to develop public access to technology across the metro area and is pursuing other digital excellence initiatives that encourage residents, businesses, and communities to participate fully in 21st century online economic and social spheres.

Downtown and Suburb Combination Delivers Range of Benefits

The four DataBank Chicago data center colocation facilities are conveniently located in both the downtown area and in the suburbs. Together, they offer more than 132,000 sq. ft. of data center space and 14 megawatts of power. These facilities also provide access to a broad range of fiber, Internet, and connectivity options. Each facility offers amenities that include loading docks, package service, parking, conference rooms, office space, break rooms, workspace, and Wi-Fi.

Interested in learning more? Take a closer look at our Chicago data centers, or request a no-obligation quote today.

DataBank’s Chicago Metro by the Numbers

4

Data Centers

13

Total Megawatts

43+

Total Carriers

132,000

Total Square Feet

DataBank’s Chicago Metro Data Centers

ORD1: Chicago Loop

Financial District

600 South Federal Street

8,000 square feet, 1 MW of critical IT load

Explore this data center

ORD2: Downtown Chicago

Near Little Italy

840 S. Canal Street

10,000 square feet, 2 MW of critical IT load

Explore this data center

ORD3: Mount Prospect, IL

25 minutes from O’Hare Airport

800 E. Business Center Drive

28,000 square feet, 2.1 MW of critical IT load

Explore this data center

ORD4: Tri-State Data Center-Oak Brook, IL

30 minutes from downtown Chicago

1808 Swift Drive – Oak Brook, IL

86,000 square feet, 8.8 MW of critical IT load

Explore this data center

*World Business Chicago